


the empty space to fill

by KayinTruth



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Gen, Gift Fic, dragon!Tony, lord!Steve, siren!Natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8069962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayinTruth/pseuds/KayinTruth
Summary: Three years ago, Lord Rogers promised a dragon that it would be free to approach the castle, so long as it was on foot.He hadn't actually expected Tony to take him up on it.
Inspired by Zekkass' "Dragons and Harpies" series.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zekkass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zekkass/gifts).
  * Inspired by [don't burn the bridge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1844362) by [Zekkass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zekkass/pseuds/Zekkass). 



The order had come so long ago that Kate hardly remembers it when she needs to. She’d only just joined up at the time, the lord only just returned to the castle

_Dragon!_ She nearly lets the call burst from her lips, bow uselessly raised and drawn before she remembers

_-“he wants us to what?”_

_“If that bloody monster-loving fool of a lord expects us to-“_

_“A dragon!”_

_“Shut up! All of you. I’m just reading you the lord’s word. If a red dragon approaches the castle on foot, let him be. Ask his intention before you shoot him”-_

She remembers someone, she can’t even remember who, snarling _“How about I ask him and shoot him at the same time?”_ She remembers agreeing at the time.

She’d agree now, but for how every muscle in her body is frozen. God, the dragon is terrifying. It’s as tall as the wall. Taller; neck bending and creasing to put its head right at Kate’s level.

“Who goes there?” she finally manages to get out, which is straight out of a tale but also the only thing she can think of.

“A dragon,” it answers, warm breath blowing her hair back from her face. She’s pretty certain what follows is a laugh. She wishes she’d put on her helmet, but it interferes with her peripheral vision. 

“Wh- Why?” she manages, pauses. Breathes in and out in tiny increments. Finds her voice. “What’s your purpose?”

“I would speak to the lord of this castle. Get him for me,”

“I can’t,” Kate says. “I have to stay here. It’s my post.” 

A snort of warmer – nearly hot – breath. “Then send someone.”

“Right,” Kate says, eventually. She half turns away from the wall, and calls down to the square below. Kamala is there. Good. Kamala’s a friend of Captain Danvers – even if a complete dick is on duty at the castle, Kamala will get the message through.

Kamala comes at her call, and freezes as her head crests the top of the stairs and she sees the dragon. Kate hurries over. 

“Get Lord Rogers. Get him here, and _don’t breathe a word of this to anyone_.”

“Yeah,” Kamala says. “Yeah, okay.” And then she’s off, bounding down the stairs like her legs were 3 feet long and weaving through the crowd like she paper-thin. 

Belatedly, Kate thinks, “You’re not going to eat him, right?” she asks. “It’s just. He’s a good lord. On the whole.”

“Not immediately,” the dragon answers. “It depends.”

“On what? How tasty he is?” Kate can’t help herself.

The dragon snorts another laugh.

*

She relaxes abruptly when she sees Lord Rogers approaching. Her muscles feel shaky from being tensed so long. The Lord’s whole entourage is here – the harpy, the siren, the witch… Bruce (the alchemist, the no-one-quite-knows-but-it’s- certainly-effective-in-smashing). And the… well, archer. The no-one-knows-but-this-is-Lord-Rogers-and-he-loves-monsters-and-the-archer-does-have-ridiculously-good-aim.  
  
(Kate knows Clint’s just human – even counting his deafness, which had a bonus in making him immune to Natasha’s charmed speech – but it’s fun to listen to the rumors.)

They climb the wall, heads turning to follow their progress, up, up

… and then the screaming starts. 

The dragon is, after all, taller than the wall, visible to anyone who looks up. It arches itself to full height as Lord Rogers comes close.

For the first time, Kate can see that there’s a hole in its chest, gaping and dark. 

Lord Rogers smiles. “I was beginning to think I’d never see you again,” he starts conversationally. “How are you?”

The dragon snorts at him, irritated, and says “Well enough,” sullenly. “I’ve come to trade. I need something built. I need human tools and human hands.” 

Lord Rogers nods. “I see. And what have you to trade?” he asks gently.

If Kate didn’t know better, she’d say the dragon looked a parody of nervousness. It doesn’t answer. She can only imagine what it _could_ answer. Gold? Meat? Labour? It could probably lift a ton if they could build a harness rig. She bets Riri could do it.

“You know what I have to trade,” the dragon answers, and the words are clipped, irritated. _Okay, so, history there_ , Kate thinks. 

*

There’s still a measure of panic in the square below, but it’s calming as he stands here, as the dragon – Tony – fails to start breathing fire. 

He should send Kate to clear out the streets, just in case, Steve thinks. Her father will have a fit when he finds out she was on the wall facing a dragon. 

(Of course, Lord Bishop would have to pay a modicum of attention to his daughter to find out, so Steve has time.)

Tony stares back at him, misery written in the angle of his wings, although the prideful tilt of his head might fool some.

“I won’t ask for that,” he promises. “I didn’t want it then, and I don’t want it now.” 

He wonders where Tony’s hidden his heart; Steve can’t imagine he wants to stick around for long. It’s incredible that he’s even here in the first place. Four hundred years of slavery. He can’t imagine. 

(He tries sometimes. He wonders if being forced to kill is one of the reasons he’s never heard a word about Tony troubling his lands. He can't imagine he'd ever want to kill again.)

The dragon’s head tilts and draws back in suspicion. “Then what?” 

“I don’t know,” Steve says simply. “We’ll figure it out. Bruce, can you…?”

Bruce steps forward, pulling out the small book where he makes his notes, and a small quill. The book goes on the parapet, and out comes a tiny ink bottle. “Tell me what you need,” he says. “I’ve had training as a scribe. I’ll make sure it’s made properly.”

Tony’s head swivels to stare at Bruce, and then back to Steve, the tense misery slowly leaving his haunches. There’s confusion instead, worry. 

It keeps one eye on him, but he begins speaking, describing something – a process of curing animal hide, it sounds like. Bruce’s head bends and the feathered end of the quill bobs and weaves. 

“Is this wise?” Natasha asks, voice low and sweet in his ear. “Dragons aren’t known for making deals, or for leaving the countryside of wherever they happen to be in peace.”

“He hasn’t bothered the countryside in the… what, three years that it’s been since I invited him to live here,” he points out, and she cuts him a sharp look. Abruptly, he remembers that he never told her that part of the story. 

“We don’t know that he stayed here,” she says, in a tone that warns him they’ll be talking again later, when it’s more private and she can make her displeasure fully known. 

“No, but regardless. It’s worked out so far,” he says, and then, “Lady Bishop, would you go back to the castle, and get some lunch brought up? And have them slaughter,” he considers; Tony’s size against the cost to the royal budget, “better make it three cows and have them brought here.”

*

“What do you think?” he asks Riri, after Natasha has had her say. It was stupid, yes. It only turned out because Steve has God’s own luck, yes. It’s reckless to allow a dragon to stay on their lands now, yes.

He’s going to do it anyway, yes.

Natasha had left, to spend the night keeping Tony company, she said. Keeping watch was more like it. Clint had gone with her. 

“It’s a harness,” she says eventually, frowning over Bruce’s notebook. “A harness with a pouch in the front. What does it-“

“He,” Steve interjects, and she frowns at him for the interruption, but goes on.

“What does he want with a pouch?”

Sam glances over meaningfully, and it’s only because he knows these two, knows their hearts and their minds that Steve doesn’t keep his silence. 

“He wants a safe place to keep his heart.”

*

“So,” the siren says. Tony glances over, but continues taking tiny strips out of the corpse of the second cow. He knows better than to gorge himself. He’s never been, and will never be the largest of his kind, and it’s been three years since he’s been able to eat his fill, besides.

“Three years,” she says, and he can hear the natural magic overlaying her voice, the guards on the wall letting their attention drift from him to her as she speaks. The human man that had come with her, leans back against the stair wall, apparently unaffected.

“Yes,” Tony answers. It’s been three years since he’s had anyone to talk to, too. Longer since anyone asked him a question.

“Where have you been?” she asks, and he considers lying. But the mountains are near impassable anyway, on foot, for humans. There’s the harpy, who’d been a formidable opponent, that once. 

(He’d pulled back as soon as Tony had disengaged, pulled inexorably down down down by the human man who’d held Tony’s heart in his hands, and then let it go. 

Steven Rogers, lord of these land.)

There’s the mountain goats. Hardly a challenge. More of a challenge not to eat all of them, to keep enough around that he won’t have to leave the mountains to hunt. 

Of course, he’s done that anyway – his heart. Is it safe? Is it where he left it? It’s summer, could someone have unblocked the cave?

He waits, waits for the tug of the magic binding him to his heart, to his life. 

It doesn’t come. And then he considers: the siren wants to know where he’s been so she can find it. So she can take it, take him. Perhaps she wants to be lord of the realm. He looks her over, dangerous and wild, head drawing back.

“Easy,” she says, and this time the magic in her voice is aimed at him.  
  
He’s being paranoid. In three years, there’s been nothing. The mountains have remained empty except for him and the goats, and the occasional traveler who passed by, clearly unaware of the dragon.

“I don’t agree with slavery any more than Steve does. You have nothing to fear from me,” she says, which calms Tony more than her magic ever could. He’s a dragon. It’s not effective in the slightest. 

“Why ask,” he questions, grudging and despite himself. Back home, before, he’d been known for his quick tongue, quick temper and wit. But here, he’d been wanted for his fire and his talons, not his words. He’s been silent so long he’s forgotten how to speak.

“You haven’t plundered our lands, nor have I heard of other lands being plundered recently” she answers, smooth and measured despite watching him tear the cattle to pieces, piece by piece. “You have to have been eating something, somewhere.” She shrugs carelessly. “I’m curious.”

“There are places no human will go, though they lay claim to it,” he says.  
  
She smiles, amused. “They do do that, don’t they?”

Tony doesn’t care what human lays claim to the mountain range. It’s his now. 

“You’re from the ocean,” he says, because this he knows: sirens lure humans to their deaths at sea.

“Another place that men will lay claim to, even though they don’t really want it and couldn’t possibly defend it,” she agrees, “so I would know.”

“Now you’re here,” he points out, and she apparently hears the question.

“I’ll tell you the story sometime,” she promises, cutting that off as a conversation topic.

“Do you control him?” Tony wonders, knowing she’ll know which ‘him’. 

She laughs. “I wish. It would save me trouble,” she say, and then lowers her voice. “I’ve never tried. Lord Rogers is a good man. I’ve never seen him take advantage of the trust others place in him. If you continue to leave the people and livestock of his lands alone, you have nothing to fear.”

“Just a trade, terms unset,” Tony points out. 

“He won’t ask more than you can give. He won’t endanger your life or take your freedom,” she assures. 

Tony doesn’t respond, worry gnawing at his insides. He finishes the second cow, compulsively, and then berates himself. He can’t afford to become torpid and heavy. 

“You can eat your fill,” she says. “Lord Rogers will provide more.”

“He’d beggar his lands for a dragon,” Tony responds skeptically, turning a question into a statement.

The siren smiles again. “These are rich lands. They have enjoyed abundance and good leadership for three years and more. We have the cows to spare.”

*

The lord returns in the morning, more cows in tow, with a human who looks too small to be full grown, Rogers’ opposite in every way – short and slight, hair a dark cloud of curls. She has rope slung over her shoulder.

“This is Riri Williams,” Steve says, after offering a polite greeting that Tony doesn’t return. Too worried, too suspicious, Steve judges. His heart aches with pity. “She’s my chief engineer.”

Riri stares up at the dragon without fear. “I need measurements,” she says.

“I gave them,” Tony grumbles, hooking a carcass with one claw and pulling it off the cart. 

“I need to be sure they’re accurate, and I need them in units the grunt workers can handle.”

“Most of the workers can’t read, or do higher maths like Riri,” Rogers explains. “The tanning will take about a fortnight to complete, but it’ll certainly take longer if the tanners get the initial measurements wrong.”

Tony lets out a long breath – a distinctly human gesture. He’d picked it up from one of the many handlers he’d had over the years. He’d picked up many human mannerisms, since humans are generally so impolite as to refuse to learn dragon.  
  
A fortnight. Well, it could be worse. Rogers could have refused outright; could have reneged on his promise of safety-in-exchange-for-safety; could have-  
he’s seized by the sudden need to fly, to return to the mountains and unearth his heart. To make sure that it’s still safe. 

He calms himself almost immediately – paranoid again. It would be impossible for any number of soldiers to have reached the mountain range overnight. Not even on the swiftest horse, and that even assumes they’d know where his heart is hidden.

“Natasha tell me you’ve made a home in that mountain range I suggested,” Rogers continues as if Tony’s momentary distraction, his distress, went completely unnoticed. “If you’d like to return in a fortnight, that would be fine. Or you can stay; food will be provided.”

A devil’s bargain – remain here and worry about his heart, or go and worry that Rogers will change his mind about the usefulness of Tony’s only bargaining chip and Tony will return to find a trap and new terms waiting when he returns. How long for a harness? Another fortnight? A year? And will he get his heart back once the indentured servitude is over?

(He can refuse those terms, Tony soothes himself, neck and wings tightening to keep from launching him straight into flight. It’ll be Rogers’ problem if he started production before Tony agreed.)

“This isn’t a trick,” Rogers says, with such infinite gentleness and kindness that Tony cannot now, and will probably never comprehend the full extent of it. “Actually, I’ve figured out what you can give me in trade. If you left now, you could probably have the harness paid for by the time you return.”

Fear clenches tight around Tony’s chest.  
“How did you know it was a harness?” he demands, neck arching abruptly

-his head out of stabbing range, Rogers in range of his fire breath- 

It exposes the hole where his heart should be, but there’s no danger to that anymore. 

Rogers blinks. 

The guards reach for their swords, and the wall archers draw and aim.

“It’s pretty obvious,” Riri says. “I mean, there’s only so many ways that number and size of straps can be put together.”

“It would have become clear when we began assembling, Tony,” Rogers says, too familiar.

Right. Of course. He calms, and embarrassment sets his head low and clamps his wings to his side. “What is it you want from me?” he asks, and then snaps, as Rogers opens his mouth, “this isn’t acceptance. I won’t agree unless I know what you want of me.”

“Of course,” Rogers takes it in stride, and Tony feels off balance. Rogers is like no other, no other man nor monster nor dragon. 

“Years ago,” Rogers begins, and his face tightens in pain, “I had- A good friend of mine and I were-” He stops. Clenches his eyes shut. Continues.

“I lost a good friend in those mountains. He was a brother to me, but years ago, he fell to his death, and I have never been able to find his body,” he says, as close tonelessly as humans can manage with that pitiful control over their vocal chords. 

“If you would search the mountains for him. If you would bring him home,” Rogers’ voice stops, and he rubs at his throat. “Or if he is not there, if his body is,” again. “If you would bring word, I will consider the trade fair.”

A fortnight to search the mountain range for a dead body. In exchange for a freedom from constant fear and wariness. The ability to travel again. 

“There must be hundreds of bodies in those mountains. And your friend must be nothing but bone by now,” Tony notes. “Am I to bring all of them until I find the right one?”

“I can… he was wearing distinctive clothing,” Rogers says, voice still tight. “I can draw you a picture, to help identify him."

“Agreed,” Tony says, immediately, before the terms can change.

Rogers’ shoulders sags – in relief, it looks, to Tony’s eyes. Riri straightens her shoulders. 

“Let’s get started then,” she says, grinning, and pulls the coil of rope off her shoulders.

*

The mountain range is wide and long, but young as mountains go. There are still cracks and crevices with edges sharp from the earthquakes that formed them.

He doesn’t complete his search in a fortnight, compelled to return to his heart almost every day. Sometimes several times a day.

He returns to town anyway – perhaps if he explains, promises that he will complete the trade… he can work faster and better with his heart, reach the deeper crevices that a dragon’s bulk won’t fit.

When he does, Rogers and his retinue stare up, assessing. He tries to look honest, loyal… he honestly has no idea how to do that though. Not once in 400 years has he ever needed to, much less wanted to. He settles on bowing his head, as humans do when they come upon someone higher in rank than them, when they swear fealty. 

(It rankles. He is a dragon, after all, and Rogers a mere man.)

(Except for all the ways he has shown he’s not “merely” anything.)

“Alright,” Rogers says, and several sets of eyes, the guards and the archers on the wall, the man with the bow – snap to him to gape. But the siren and the harpy nod in agreement, slowly. 

*

The pouch flaps loose against his hide as he flies back, but once it is filled, it tucks neatly into the hole in his chest, the harness holding it in place even through the contortions Tony forces his body through. Just as he’d planned. The engineer had done good work.

Immediately he feels better, safer. He can even feel his magic – locked away in his heart for so long – begin to permeate through his body again. 

Experimentally, he changes his self, marveling at the distance of the ceiling, the cold of the stone against his bare feet, the brush of hair against his face. 

The cold of wind-frozen tears against his face. He lifts a hand – soft and pink, five ~~clawed~~ fingered - to his cheeks, the drops them to his chest, traces the harness wrapped around his human-shaped shoulders, marvels at the blue glow of his heart, once again filling the hole in his chest.

He relaxes, changes back. Hunts and slaughters and eats a goat with joy and gusto.

And then he gets to work. 

He has a body to find.


End file.
